Marisacat

Repost from Mcat, May 3, 2006 31 December 2006

And all the dead air is alive. With the smell of America’s God.
– Harold Pinter, “War With Iraq”

America needs to stop looking outside, demonising and mythologising “the other” – and look within. All parties and partisans who supported the Iraq invasion and thus supported Bush and the wider war that is coming…

“The Badr are all over the hospital, looking for people,” said the doctor. “The injured brought here sometimes die before even reaching the ward, because the Badr are being obstacles for us. One of the men running our morgue was killed by the Badr. My friends are warning me to be careful, to keep my mouth shut.”

The numbers are being hidden … and the Badr, operating out of the Ministry of Interior, which is funded by the US, are making sure the numbers remain shrouded.

Yet on Tuesday of this week, a spokesman at that same hospital, speaking on condition of anonymity of course, announced that in the last 48 hours alone Yarmouk Hospital had received 65 bodies, most of them slaughtered by death squads in execution-style murders. That day they had received 40 bodies, and Monday, 25.

Veteran Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk writes for the Independent in the UK and has reported from the region for over 30 years. He had this to say in a piece written on March 20th titled, “The Iraq War: Three Years On – The march of folly that has led to a bloodbath”:

“The Iraqis? Well, they are lesser beings whose casualties cannot be revealed to us by the Iraqi ministry of health, on orders from the Americans and British; creatures whose suffering, far greater than our own, must be submerged in the democracy and freedom in which we are drowning them; whose casualties “more or less” [mocking the infamous quote from George W. Bush] are probably nearer to 150,000.

After all, if 1,000 Iraqis could die by violence last July – in Baghdad alone; and if they are being killed at 60 or 70 a day, then we have a near genocidal bloodbath on our hands.

Iraqis, however, are now our Untermenschen for whom, frankly, we do not greatly care.”

Even the UN Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN) humanitarian news agency reported on April 26 that

“More than 90 women become widows each day due to continuing violence countrywide, according to government officials and non-governmental organizations devoted to women’s issues.”

Another extremely telling point in the IRIN report is that

“Although few reliable statistics are available on the total number of widows in Iraq, the Ministry of Women’s Affairs says that there are at least 300,000 in Baghdad alone, with another eight million throughout the country.”

The report said that at least 15 police officers’ wives are widowed every day, and that local NGOs in Iraq said the situation had become much worse since the 2003 US-led invasion of the country, which has brought horrific violence on a level not seen before.

“Saddam Hussein was responsible for killing thousands of men during his 25 years of brutal rule,” said Ibtissam Kamal in the IRIN report. Kamal, a member of a local organization that works on the issue but prefers anonymity of the organization for security reasons, added, “But more people have died during the past three years, most of them men …”

How many more years?

Just last night, Nightline ran a fairly canned piece on the high tech mil facility, at Nellis AFB outside of LV, NV where the computerised war is fought, managing the predator drones that wage a good piece of the war. It was a pretty up beat piece. Religion was mentioned as solace for the work done there.

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“THE PRESIDENT: Thank you all very much. Admiral Kelly, Captain Card, officers and sailors of the USS Abraham Lincoln, my fellow Americans: Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed. (Applause.) And now our coalition is engaged in securing and reconstructing that country.”

March 17, 2006

“A major military operation targeting insurgents and foreign fighters in northern Iraq is continuing into a second day, the US military says.
The US military said the assault, dubbed Operation Swarmer, was intended to “clear a suspected insurgent operating area” north-east of Samarra.
They describe it as the biggest airborne operation in Iraq since the US invasion in 2003, involving more than 50 aircraft and 1,500 troops.”

I saw some recent postings by Miss Devore on marisacat’s blog, which appears to be comprised of little more than bizarre dkos-bashing (yet still gets my attention in a train wreck sort of way), and it occurred to me that a sizable subset of the blogosphere appears to be made entirely of sites by embittered ex-kossacks who for one reason or another allowed their meta-ego to eclipse their interest in current events.

I had no idea there were so many of these folks until very recently and I find it very amusing. I better get cracking on my slow dkos insanity buildup so that I can go start my own site.

Vilsacktacular! Relentless!

by ablington on Sun Dec 31, 2006 at 12:51:35 PM PST

[ Parent ]

i remember marisacat (6+ / 0-)
Recommended by:Sharoney, taylormattd, ablington, tryptamine, Elise, Nightprowlkitty
would you mind emailing the url of the blog? (don’t post it as we shouldn;t drive more traffic there). Thanks

Most of the things worth doing in the world had been declared impossible before they were done. Louis D. Brandeis

Damn. And I haven’t been banned anywhere. I’m obviously not part of the Cool Crowd here. Whaaa!! (maybe my leaving dkos of my own accord after pie counts?? huh, does it?? please??)

ps – MCat, I wasn’t aware we weren’t allowed to be interested in current events if we read this blog. I think it’s kind of disingenuous of you to post all those articles about Iraq policy, Lebanon, choice, etc. just to hook me in….

Just a pathetic bunch. If someone wants to see weeks (it seemed it was) of Armando alienating a wide spectrum of people… they can run a site search at Kos, based on time perameters (I forget when the Summers stuff broke) and read the Armando comments diaries and Fp slobbers.

LOL He just alienated masses of people, thru long long threads.. And was unhinged.

My, the DK/TNH dittoheads are trolling very heavily these days.
It’s difficult to imagine what impulse (s) caused 14 idiots to uprate that post. I can only assume that they also read this blog and have their own little email list devoted to hating everyone who understands that they’re not quite….right..

So.

At Thursday's debate, Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren defended their Medicare for All plan. They faced criticism from several rivals, including Senator Amy Klobuchar, who described it as a "bad idea," and South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who claimed the bill shows Sanders and Warren do not "trust the American people."

At the third presidential primary debate in Houston, Texas, senator and 2020 candidate Elizabeth Warren called for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. Warren also spoke about her stance on U.S. trade policy and how "our trade policy in America has been broken for decades."

After being questioned about the crisis in Venezuela, Senator Bernie Sanders defended his vision of democratic socialism. "I agree with what goes on in Canada and in Scandinavia: guaranteeing healthcare to all people as a human right. I believe that the United States should not be the only major country on Earth not to provide paid family and medical le […]

Debate moderator Jorge Ramos of Univision grilled former Vice President Joe Biden over the Obama administration's deportation record. Biden refused to answer whether he did anything to prevent Obama from deporting a record 3 million people.

A U.S. House of Representatives panel on Friday demanded internal emails, detailed financial information and other company records from top executives of Amazon.com Inc., Facebook Inc, Apple Inc, and Alphabet Inc's Google, widening the antitrust probe of Big Tech.

U.S. Senator and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris on Friday asked a government watchdog to look into the Trump administration's decision to launch an antitrust probe into four automakers cooperating with California on tighter greenhouse gas emissions limits that Trump is trying to eliminate.

A lawyer for former FBI official Andrew McCabe pressed U.S. prosecutors on Friday to drop their politically sensitive case against him, citing reports that suggest they may be having trouble securing criminal charges.

Media

from Howl

I'm with you in Rockland
where we wake up electrified out of the coma
by our own souls' airplanes roaring over the
roof they've come to drop angelic bombs the
hospital illuminates itself imaginary walls collapse
O skinny legions run outside O starry
spangled shock of mercy the eternal war is
here O victory forget your underwear we're free
I'm with you in Rockland
in my dreams you walk dripping from a sea-
journey on the highway across America in tears
to the door of my cottage in the Western night

October 7 1955

"a remarkable collection of angelson one stage reading their poetry"
"I think Allen Ginsberg standing up there reading - putting himself on the line - was one of the two bravest things I've ever seen. Remember, it was '55. People had crew cuts, and they looked at you like you were misplaced cannon fodder. The country was being run by Luce publications. It was a dangerous, cold, ugly time, and it was scary. . .
In all our memories no one had been so outspoken in poetry before. We had gone beyond a point of no return. None of us wanted to go back to the grey, chill, militaristic silence, to the intellectual void - to the land without poetry - to the spiritual drabness. We wanted to make it new and we wanted to invent it and the process of it as we went into it. We wanted voice and we wanted vision."
-Michael McClure

Democrats…

Same as goddam fucking forever.
Over and over, in election year after election year, GE and MidTerms both… the Dems start to purr and preen, they stretch luxuriously - at just being TOLD they are going to win [...]
It never fails.
... in February of 2002, looking over the already joyless congressional stragglers willing to be drafted for duty… they barely dreamed, yet, it was even possible (Howard, a different person then, had not arrived to say it could be done)… but one thing was clear, we could not rely on the party to swing it. Could not. You could smell it, they would screw the deal. And I am not talking about Howard and primary issues here. By the end, that was a passing political story. Chuck it on the heap.
[...]
Upshot? The Republicans make it thru. They hold on.